Full disclosure: I fully believe there is no way, no way period, that this movie will ever actually get made. Unless Uwe Boll is hired. So let’s all just accept now the fact that we will never actually see it, ok?

Anywaaaaay, some new news about the presumed-deceased Castlevania has emerged courtesy of the immortal Michael Dorn. Speaking to Startrek.com, the man who inhabited Worf for more than 20 years discussed his current and upcoming projects, one of which is his bizarre kickstarter seeking to fund a romantic comedy he wrote and will star in, along with several other Star Trek alums. Yes, I just wrote that.

However, he also discussed the apparently not-cancelled Castlevania movie. “People have been trying to get this thing done for a long time,” he said, “and they finally got the producers together that want to do it. They finally got the OK from the owners, and so they’re doing it.” Are they now? Hookay. So what’s Michael’s role? “It’s a fun little part. It’s four days, and I’m playing a werewolf that’s been around for a gajillion years who works for this vampire. It’s not too far from Worf because there’s a lot of killing and jumping and sword fights and everything.”

This film has been in and out of the ICU since being announced in 2006. Somehow, a soft confirmation of the development implanted into an interview for the premier Trek website doesn’t strike me as the most rock solid evidence that the movie is going to be completed. I don’t doubt Dorn has been secured, of course. But my guess is that it’s still very much in the ‘securing full funding’ stages. Expect this to be quietly canceled, again.

Anyway, how depressing is Dorn’s Kickstarter pitch? “We also want to show the the people who run Hollywood that “sci-fi” fans are not only interested in science fiction, but are multidimensional and a force to be reckoned with.” I say this as a lifelong trek fan, and a DS9 die hard at that, but damn, it really does kind of blow how Star Trek actors get completely locked into their roles for life. I would love to see them not have to bow and scrape like that.

So think of the silliest thing possible. Useless, easily mockable, difficult to use and most of all, entirely antithetical to the very idea of what it is you’re supposed to be doing. That, my friends, is the history of Nintendo’s video game business in a nutshell. Oh sure, they dominated the world for nearly 15 years thanks to having 2 genius consoles in a row, each packed with mountains of classic games. And they managed to dominate, at least financially, the 7th generation of consoles thanks to correctly predicting the rise of social and casual gaming, and releasing a console cheap enough to hook people who hadn’t yet adopted smartphones. But if you’re old enough to remember the original NES era, then you know that Nintendo was also keen as hell on silly, gimmicky peripherals, practically from the start.

What the hell, right? Apparently that’s what Howard thought too. He says he was informed 30 minutes in advance that he had to demo this oddity for the Chairman of Toys ‘R Us, a demo he admits he was not jazzed about. Thankfully, the knitting peripheral was never released anywhere. “It was shown at WCES in 1987,” he said on his FB page, “to gauge retailer demand and then forgotten… The Famicom Disc System game video posted by FrankC shows what was simply a pattern editing cart with some instruction that was release in 1986 in Japan without the knitting peripheral (the prototype shown in the pic I posted). The Famicom Disc software alone was a “hit” in Japan likely because every father who bought a Famicom Disc System purchased the knitting software too in order to help justify the purchase.”

This might be the silliest thing they ever did, but only barely. This was the generation, after all, that also saw R.O.B., a ridiculous robot that did clunky things in response to compatible games (of which there were only two). Let’s bow our heads in remembrance of the ridiculous things giant corporations make their employees do, shall we?

It would of course take another 20 years before Nintendo scored gimmick gold with the Wii.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/nintendo-scientists-once-invented-silliest-gaming-peripheral-ever/feed/1Google Aims To Win April Fools Day With Google Maps For NEShttp://www.gamefront.com/google-aims-to-win-april-fools-day-with-google-maps-for-nes/
http://www.gamefront.com/google-aims-to-win-april-fools-day-with-google-maps-for-nes/#commentsSun, 01 Apr 2012 00:14:29 +0000Ross Lincolnhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=159607"Blow on the cartridge to fix bugs."

For April Fool’s day, Google has 8 bit-ized Google Maps by adding ‘Quest’ to the list of map view options. This turns everything into a Legend of Zelda Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest map (that’s the greater Los Angeles area above), which is of course awesome. They’ve also released a pretty hilarious video, right down to the obvious Japanese developer reading from a phonetically-rendered script, explaining how “Goole Maps for NES” works.

The fondly remembered Battletoads series, launched for NES back 21 years ago might have lain fallow since 1994, but if a team of Hungarian developers has its way, the series may finally get a relaunch for the current generation. On Saturday, an announcement was made via press release that the unnamed team is attempting to raise money to make a Battletoads sequel happen. To that end, they’ve started an Indiegogo page with the goal of raising 1 million, 1 hundred thousand dollars over the next two months.

Battletoads might have been a TMNT rip off, but while it never made our list of the most difficult games in history, it was a genuine challenge that managed to exceed low expectations and rightly remains among the most beloved games of the NES-era. But before you make a donation, a review of the available facts is in order. First, the funds being raised won’t actually go to the game‘s development, at least not initially. The point here is to raise enough capital to license the franchise from Rare. Once licensing rights are secured, they would then begin development with the intent of eventually releasing the proposed game on XBLA, PSN and PC. Current license holders would have to agree to the deal before anything could actually happen, and that’s not guaranteed.

It’s also worth mentioning that the developers are currently not identified. The only information provided so far is that they’re Hungarian, and have “a private investor behind them”. The Indiegogo page does promise that more details will be provided in the next few days. Presumably, this will include an actual plan, full disclosure of all involved parties, and a detailed risk assessment. While we’re excited about the possibility of a new Battletoads game, we would caution our readers to wait until these details are provided before chipping in.

While we wait, tell us, Game Fronters: would you even play a new Battletoads game? Let us know in comments.

2011 will probably seen as a watershed moment in gaming. There were no new consoles of course, computers remained, well, computing devices, and the biggestgameswereallsequels. But in June, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled to overturn an odious censorship law aimed at games and in the process, bestowed them with legal recognition that they’re art. That’s a big deal, and it’s as good a reason as any to reflect on the last 50 years or so of gaming and think about the achievements that got us here.

With that in mind, here’s GameFront’s list of the 5 greatest gaming moments of all time.

Coming in at number 5 is the moment that the gaming industry grew up, moved out of its parent’s homes and got a job. Naturally, video games have been big business going back to the 70s, but the industry was still considered a second-rate entertainment revenue stream. That changed in the first decade of the 21st century, when video game sales began to overtake film and music sales. The exact point of demarcation is up for grabs. 2005 is the year American video game sales overtook film. In 2007, games finally overtook the music industry domestically. In 2008, worldwide video game sales surpassed both music and the movie industry.

For our money, it’s 2009, the year video game sales finally surpassed film, music and the DVD/Blu-ray industries (in total, not combined). Video Games have essentially been dominant ever since. 2011 estimates aren’t in yet, but to put things in perspective, for the month of November, the gaming industry enjoyed 3 billion dollars in domestic sales. Total 2011 movie ticket sales are estimated around 9 Billion.

4) 1997: Deep Blue (Probably) Beats Garry Kasparov

In 1997, Chess Champion gary Kasparov was on top of the world. Already regarded as one of the greatest chess players in the history of the game, he had beaten IBM’s beefy chess-playing computer Deep Blue 4-2, ‘proving’ that artificial intelligence could not match the power of the human mind. His victory still fresh in global imagination, he agreed to a rematch in 1997, and in a stunning upset, Deep Blue won this series, 3.5 to 2.5. This humiliated Kasparov and boosted IBM’s reputation just as the dot com boom was kicking into full swing.

A 2003 documentary investigated Kasparov’s claim that IBM cheated during the 1997 rematch and concluded they may just have, as a stunt to boost their stock value. IBM claims otherwise, but having dismantled Deep Blue, we’ll never know. What is clear, however, is that an artificial game-playing intelligence beat a human being, forever changing the way people looked at computer gaming. That advances made in the development of Deep Blue have profoundly affected subsequent video game AI is simply an added bonus. Sure, Chess might not be a video game, but Deep Blue sure is. And we’re just happy to find out the old adage is true: In Russia, Video Game Plays You!

3) 1972: The First Video Game Console

When you ask people to name the first video game console, people tend to say either Pong (pretty wrong) or the Atari (and those people are really, really wrong). Atari is old of course; their Pong console came out in 1975, and the 2600 dropped in 1977, (considered the beginning of generation 2, but you know that). The home video game age actually began in 1972 with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey.

The Odyssey is a weird hybrid, having both analogue and digital circuitry and discrete components. It was primitive, available only in black and white (with cheap color transparencies gamers could put in front of their TV screens to ‘simulate’, if you could call it that, a color game), and no sound. But it played real graphical games and featured the first gun peripheral ever, a light gun called the Shooting Gallery that, when plugged into the Oddyssey, gave gamers access to 4 different, incredibly crappy shooting games.

Unfortunately, though it came first, it’s only barely remembered because it didn’t sell very well. Magnavox sold it only at Magnavox retail centers, leading many consumers to believe it would only work on a Magnavox television (suffice to say, consumers were way less savvy in the 70s). But Atari did totally rip off Oddyssey’s Tennis game in the design of Pong, and at least it looked cool, like a 2001: A Space Oddyssey style aesthetic, which might have been the point, given the name.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/the-5-greatest-gaming-moments-of-all-time/feed/4VGAs 2011: Zelda Franchise First Ever Inductee Into The Video Game Hall of Famehttp://www.gamefront.com/vgas-2011-zelda-franchise-first-ever-inductee-into-the-video-game-hall-of-fame/
http://www.gamefront.com/vgas-2011-zelda-franchise-first-ever-inductee-into-the-video-game-hall-of-fame/#commentsSun, 11 Dec 2011 02:29:30 +0000Ross Lincolnhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=142964Shigeru Miyamoto was on hand to accept, and to be charmingly Japanese.

Spike TV has created what some may argue is long overdue and some may feel is a dangerous move toward ossified irrelevance*, the Video Game Hall of Fame, and the first indctee is the, ahem, legendary Legend of Zelda franchise. Shigeru Miyamoto made a charming appearance to accept, and reminded me of why I was such a super Nintendo fanboy for so many years. Seriously, there’s just something kind of wonderfully wholesome about the culture of Nintendo, right? One thing he did not talk about was the rumor, since denied, that he would be stepping down. So don’t ask!

*I confess. I feel this way. BOOO Hall of fames! They turn living culture into museum fixtures! That’s bad! But if we have to have a hall of fame, then I support this selection if only because it’s a perfect depiction of how lackluster Miyamoto’s output has been in recent years. The man is a genius and undeniably one of the all-time most important figures in gaming, but he’s been essentially reiterating past successes for more than a decade.

This being the first ever inductee, we can’t say for certain, but it appears the VGHoF is going the Rock and Roll hall of fame route by requiring a 25 year span since original publication in order to qualify. If true, then there’s a lot of old, forgotten games that seriously deserve the recognition. Let us know in comments what you’d like to see, or if you’d even like to see any.

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Tonight I was just browsing the interwebs and I came upon this old video from Nintendo that shows customer service people in retail stores what to do when folks bring in their Nintendo hardware because it’s broken or whatever. It’s a cute video, and it brags about Nintendo’s seal of quality, which is supposed to mean that Nintendo stuff is never supposed to break. It basically scoffs at the idea that a Nintendo console would break on its own. Of course, given that my Nintendo 64 still works, maybe they have a point.

]]>Some things just don’t need much preamble. For some reason – probably because it’s awesome – a group of very wonderful people held a Mario Bros. flash mob in Austin. Better still, it’s a Mario 3 flash mob, judging by the raccoon tails.

Hoo boy. Ok, this is very very close to NSFW, but strategic placement of the suspenders saves it, barely. It also falls into the weird zone between creepy and creepy. It’s a sexy pinup version of Princess Peach and it’s… well, comments fail me. It’s just weird, and kind of hot, but mostly I feel creepy for saying that.

The success of Superman in the 70s may have proved that super heroes are legitimately popular entertainment, but it was the Caped Crusader who sealed the deal. Tim Burton’s original Batman films were inarguable hits and though the series descended into awful self parody, it paved the way for the super hero genre being nearly dominant among escapist cinema. And of course, there’s the whole thing about The Dark Knight being one of the best selling movies of all time. Batman is also responsible for helping restore American animation after 30 years of the Hanna-Barbera ghetto, with the very excellent Batman: The Animated Series and The Batman/Superman adventures that made weekday afternoons required TV time even for people in their 20s.

Really, when you think about it, there’s almost nothing the Dark Knight can’t do… Except for be in a good video game. Yeahyeahyeah, we know about Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. Obviously those games are pretty much perfect. But the history of playable Batman is a history of shame, boredom and crashing let-downs so awful you’d think the Joker was head developer. So in commemoration of the long-awaited release of Arkham City, we’d like to take you through a trip into times past, to before people understood that the secret of a good batman game was ‘be awesome’.

It’s been a long road to the current awesomeness of Batman and all things Arkham. And we’re going to give you a greatest hits journey through some of the crap we had to wade through to get here, 7 of the worst games ever, spanning the last 23 years. Here is The History Of Terrible Batman Games.

7) Batman: The Caped Crusader (1988)

Let’s travel back to 1988, the last year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and a whole year before Tim Burton rocked our shit with his first Batman movie. If you had an Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS or a ZX Spectrum, you could play the critically acclaimed Batman: The Caped Crusader. Blessed with a somewhat cool aesthetic inspired by comic panels, players went up against The Penguin and The Joker. Cool!

Oh wait, except instead of being an awesome, ass kicking batman game, it’s a side-scroller primarily composed of puzzle-solving and maze navigation. Are those challenging tasks? Sure. But when people become super heroes, ‘being competent at handling the Sunday edition of local newspaper’ ranks somewhat below ‘ass-kicking, bad guy beating awesomeness’. People were really easily-pleased back in the 80s.

6) Batman: The Movie – Arcade (1989)

Skip ahead a year to the release of the first Tim Burton film. Yes! Awesome plot, awesome action, awesome score! Now we’re talking. All we needed to really complete the look was a movie tie-in game that lives up to film. Enter Batman: The Movie – Arcade edition, a pretty decent looking game that also has a cool chiptune version of Danny Elfman’s score.

5) Batman (1990)

Not to front-load the early history of Batman games, but you just can’t ignore how awful people really were at making them. This execrable artifact from PC Engine is a perfect study in assuming video game buyers are so incredibly stupid they’ll purcahse literally anything, so long as it’s branded right. Batman (1990) was also tied to Tim Burton’s movie. It featured incredible cut-scenes and some excellent music, but they must have run out of budget because instead of an action game, they made… well, it’s essentially BatPacman.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/the-history-of-terrible-batman-games/feed/1If Video Game Characters Had To Find Real Jobshttp://www.gamefront.com/if-video-game-characters-had-to-find-real-jobs/
http://www.gamefront.com/if-video-game-characters-had-to-find-real-jobs/#commentsWed, 14 Sep 2011 23:24:58 +0000Ross Lincolnhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=124526It isn't easy bringing home the bacon once the quest is over. We show you how five classic characters pull it off.

When you’re in the middle of a job, it seems like it’s going to last forever. This is doubly true if the job in question is your chosen career, like lawyer or ‘not starving person’. But when the job ends, whether by project completion, puzzle solving or the final destruction of your hated enemies, you might find yourself in the position of having worked yourself quite literally out of a job.

In the real world, this is when we start collecting unemployment and praying. But then again, we have a legal work history and parents to leech off. Our friends in the world of Video Games aren’t so lucky. So what happens when one of them finds themselves without gainful employment? They’re forced to reenter the legitimate workforce, and the results aren’t always pretty.

After the Reaper menace’s crushing defeat, Commander Shephard finds himself in an unscheduled career transition. Being a Spectre is pretty awesome but it doesn’t actually pay anything, and his failure to advance beyond the rank of ‘Commander’ dooms his postwar military career. Unceremoniously drummed out of the Alliance with an honorable discharge and a tiny pension, he needs to find a new job to fund his Spectre duties.

Fortunately, what he lacks in cash flow he makes up for in name recognition and the gratitude of the Citadel chamber of commerce, whose members saw a 500% rise in profits after Shephard offered endorsements to their shops during the events of Mass Effect 2. They hire Shep without even an interview or resume, and from now on, the ultimate space soldier moonlights as the ultimate Mall cop. Whenever duty calls, he nobly announces “I should go,” and races to defend the Citadel markets from shoplifters.

4) Pac-Man – Addiction Counselor

Pac-Man spent over 30 years eating pellets, super pellets, fruits and ghosts. It was all for a noble cause of course, namely defending his maze-like realm from invasion. But the high-octane, high consumption lifestyle took its toll and when he finally retired, he was forced to admit he’d developed a serious food addiction. After seeking knowledgable and caring treatment, he reentered a society with a new purpose: help other people who, like him, found the pressures of their jobs led to self destructive addictions. Now he counsels ex stock brokers, politicians, rock stars and even teachers, helping them find a way out of the cycle of addition. He doesn’t have a cell phone but if you ever need to talk he’s just a quarter away.

3) Nathan Drake (Uncharted) – Pawn Shop Owner

Poor Nathan Drake. Despite his constant attempts to pretend otherwise, Sully is right: he ain’t gettin’ any younger. Sooner than he thought, his joints locked up, he couldn’t recover from multiple gunshot wounds just by hiding behind a wall, and Elena is dropping hints all over the house about how he ought to maybe get his retirement in order. Finally accepting that he had gotten too old for this, er, stuff, Nate finally retired from the treasure hunter/bad guy murderer field.

But what does a man without any legal employment history or non-treasure stealing/bad guy killing skills do with the rest of his life? Exactly what David O’ Russell would have done in the now aborted movie: Nate opens his own pawn shop. Now lowlifes from all walks of life can try pawning off their valuables for drug money. Best of all? It’s the perfect way to launder the illegally-gained money Nathan earned over the years. So long as any old enemies don’t come looking to get 5 bucks for a gold pocketwatch.

2) Ezio Auditore da Firenze (Assassin’s Creed)- Window Washer

Ezio’s story seemingly ends when he reaches old age in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. But au contraire al contrario il mio amico! The essence of Ezio survives in the body and mind of boring series protagonist Desmond Miles. Aware of Desmond’s lack of charisma or any interesting qualities, Ezio takes over his body in the present… and finds himself in a world vastly beyond his comprehension. The national security state means he no longer has a prayer of living as a thief. He is revered by the Assassins as a honored ancestor but his pop culture references are 500 years out of date and he creeps out modern women with his leering and silly pick up lines. Thus, he vows to retire into obscurity.

Luckily, the Assassin’s aren’t wholly heartless. They give him a job where he can still do the one thing he’s actually good at: climbing stuff. Now tasked with washing the Assassin’s headquarters’ windows, he’s able to once again enjoy the thrill of inexplicably climbing despite having access to perfectly walkable streets. The only problem? He doesn’t realize that 21st century cities don’t have random piles of hay lying around, and his career is cut short when he leaps recklessly into a pile of cardboard boxes.

1) Mario – Animal Control Officer

After more than two decades, Mario finally liberated the Mushroom Kingdom from Bowser’s Tyranny once and for all. Coincidentally, Princess Peach suddenly lost interest in her mustachioed companion, and their relationship, such as it was, ended. Mario subsequently decides to leave the Kingdom and return to his Native New York City in order to start over. The only problem is that his plumbing license expired in 1986 and he’s long since lost touch with advances in that profession.

That’s when Mario sees an ad in the New York Post: Animal Control Officer; Must have minimum 3 years of experience with dangerous animals; Degree in animal control or equivalent work experience required; Mustaches and monograms welcome. Dazzled by Mario’s experience taking out giant Gorillas, carnivorous plants and numerous species of killer turtles, he’s hired on the spot. And speaking of turtles, for his first job, he’s asked to combine the skills learned in his first career with his new job. So off he goes into the New York City sewer system to put a stop to another turtle infestation…

]]>I kind of love How It Should Have Ended, a series of webtoons devoted to making things with questionable endings better. They’ve posted a pretty hilarious take on Super Mario Bros. that positions Bowser as a misunderstood statesman dealing with an unreasonable psychopath. Watch to the end for punchline that references another game with obsessive fans.

]]>The Homeless Heroes are one of those things that makes the Internet totally worth it. They’re a freestyle rap/painting duo based out of Tampa and they do exactly what I just described. One of them raps while the other paints something related to the music. As expected, this produces VERY mixed results, but they really made me chortle with this video about Mike Tyson’s Punch Out.

Via BuzzFeed and Badass Digest, here’s something super-adorable for your Wednesday. An animation student named Beth T. has created a series of gender-swapped Super Mario Characters for a school assignment that also gives off a kind of a Don Bluth vide. She gave the treatment to Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, and the Princesses Peach and Daisy.

Beth posted the results for all the world to enjoy to her Tumblr, Rolling Rabbit Productions and now we’re going to share them with you.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/gender-inverted-smb-characters/feed/2Mario Money, Mario Problemshttp://www.gamefront.com/mario-money-mario-problems/
http://www.gamefront.com/mario-money-mario-problems/#commentsFri, 15 Jul 2011 17:24:47 +0000Ross Lincolnhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=110729Click to see a Mario-ified US Dollar in all its glory.

]]>In these troubling economic times, it’s nice to see someone coming up with 21st century solutions to 21st century problems. Like this US dollar bill, given a much needed Mario-makeover. Could this be precisely the power-up the US Economy needs? Or has the Mushroom Kingdom phased out coin-dispensing blocks in favor of a paper currency? We don’t know, but who cares. This is the best video-game related use of a one-dollar bill since they added strip clubs to Grand Theft Auto games.